Folie à deux
by Ophium
Summary: Bobby, Sam and Dean spent three weeks in Rufus' cabin, a span of time from which we know little about. This is what I imagine happened. Coda to episode 7.03
1. Chapter 1

FOLIE À DEUX- Shared madness

Even if he wasn't aware of them in these specific terms, two undeniable facts dictated Dean's life at the moment. Fact number one was that long bones, when broken, hurt a hell of a lot more than the short ones. And, fact number two, was that morphine's awesome power of making fact number one go away lasted, at best, two hours.

After two and a half hours of driving non-stop, hoping to have left Dr. I'mGonnaEatYa and the rest of the Leviathans as far behind as they could, Dean had grown quiet. Real quiet.

He looked downright mesmerized by the sight of the road, as if he hadn't already seen a gazillion trees and about twice as much of that worth in asphalt.

It took another half-hour after that for Bobby, who had been too busy trying to comb his brains for a safe place to hold up with gimpy and sleeping beauty, to realize that Dean's silence was more than just concern for his unconscious brother ridding in the back of their stolen ambulance, or the fact that they had just left behind a hospital stock full of innocent people helpless to defend themselves against the swarm of flesh-eating, pre-biblical, toothy monsters that were parading as medical personal there.

When the older hunter spared a sideways glance away from the road and to his silent passenger, Bobby found his foot hitting the brakes even before his mind had reached the brilliant connection between 'about to pass out' and 'we really needed to stop and take a break'.

"Why didn't you say anything, you id'jit?" Bobby barked as soon as the vehicle came to a stop, loose pebbles flying backwards propelled by skittering tires.

Rhetorical question at best, because Bobby could well see that Dean wasn't capable of saying anything at that point. Face as white as that stupid gown he'd been wearing just a couple of hours before, sweat pouring down the side of his face like he was the goddamn Niagara Falls and his bottom lip trapped so viciously under his teeth, there was no way a sound was escaping Dean's mouth anytime soon.

"Noth—nothing we can-cando about it any-anyway. Best to… best to j-just keep on drivin'," Dean managed to stutter, flooring all assumptions Bobby had so carefully constructed about what he could and could not do at the moment.

Bobby shook his head. While the main effect of the painkillers had obviously worn off, some other effects were still painfully present. Like the lack of rational thinking.

They were riding in a frigging _ambulance_. What did Dean think they carried in the back? Onions?

The door squeaked in protest as Bobby opened it and jumped to the ground. He walked around the front of the ambulance, keeping one eye open for any overly curious passing drivers and the other on Dean.

When Bobby'd arrived home and been greeted by smoldering embers and an ambulance speeding away from the place, he'd damn near had a heart attack. The thought of losing all of his books, of seeing the house he and Karen had called home reduced to ashes, still paled in comparison with the thought that Sam and Dean might've been inside the house when it had been torched.

After all that had happened, after everything they had been through, Bobby was certain that losing those two boys would be the straw that would break and burry the damn camel.

Emotion, more than the acrid smell of burned wood, plastic and melted metal had made his voice faint and raspy and Bobby had been forced to ask twice about any mortal victims when he'd phoned the police to check on fire report. _Twice_.

Only then did the high pitched woman's voice on the other side of the phone manage to understand what he was asking; the victims collected at the site of the arson, she had reported, had not been involved in the fire per se, but rather in some kind of assault that had resulted in a concussion and a broken leg.

Bobby was pretty sure that the woman on the other side of the line likely dubbed him a crazy person when he'd started laughing over the phone, but he really couldn't help it at the time. His house was a black piece of char; Sam and Dean were hurt badly enough that whichever one of them was conscious at the time had decided that their condition had warranted a trip to the hospital, but damn! His boys were both alive.

"Come on, you lump," Bobby said, opening the door to Dean's side.

Dean took the arm that the older man offered and gingerly slid down the seat, like some kid afraid of the water at the Waterville Park. The second his good foot touched the ground, the leg not being kept straight as an arrow by two tons of cast, folded, giving Bobby a pretty good idea as to why Dean had been laying on the floor of the hospital room when he'd first arrived to pick him up.

"Why d-didwe stop, Bobby?" Dean mouthed against Bobby's shoulder, as the older man grabbed the hoops of his belt to keep him upright.

"In case you haven't noticed, Einstein, we're driving a pharmacy on wheels," Bobby said, diverting Dean's attention from the fact that he was all but carrying him to the back of the ambulance. "I'm sure there's _something_ in this damn rig that we can give you for the pain."

To his credit, Dean didn't even bothered denying that he was, in fact, in pain.

From all the panting and swallowed whimpers, if he failed to find any good drugs, Bobby would settle for a hammer at this point, just so he could knock the Dean out of his misery. Cast or no cast, broken legs hurt like a bitch, especially after being seated on one, stuck in a bouncing, pitching vehicle for over two hours.

In hindsight, it had been foolish of them to escape the hospital without stocking up on meds for the two them, but there hadn't really been time. Dean, for one, should be under a steady flow of heavy-duty painkillers and probably some antibiotics too, not to mention that Bobby had no idea what to do with that cast or when it was supposed to come off. At least with Sam he had managed to grab the kid's file along with his unconscious self.

"Here," Bobby said, guiding Dean to lean against the side of the parked ambulance. "You ain't gonna tip over or anything, are you?"

Dean shook his head, his whole body canting to the side. It really didn't do much to assure Bobby that he wouldn't fall on his ass, but at least the kid listed _towards_ the ambulance, which was... something, he supposed.

Quickly opening the double back doors, Bobby shot a hand out, grabbing Dean just in time to save the young man from a severe nosedive and possibly another broken bone.

"There you go," Bobby grunted, half pushing, half pulling Dean into the back of the ambulance. There was a perfectly fine and empty gurney beside the one where Sam still slept and no reason at all why Dean should be up front, putting more stress on his broken limb.

"Have a seat while I see what the bartender's special is," the older man said, dry humor all around. The comment fell flat; at that moment there wasn't a single person inside the vehicle with half a wit to laugh, and in the face of all the crap headed their way, the happiness of finding each other alive was quickly wearing off. Humor or no humor, Dean didn't say a word as he complied, an action in itself that spoke a whole novel of words about how he was feeling.

"Shouldn't he be awake by now?" Dean whispered, half seated, half lying on the gurney with his broken leg up and his neck twisted so he could keep an eye on Sam. Made him look like a broken pretzel. "I mean... was it... was it safe getting him out? They wer— I remember them talking about internal blee—internal bleeding and—"

Bobby rummaged through the various cabinets and drawers built into the back of the ambulance, half a mind focused on reading a million and one labels, and the other listening to Dean's ramblings. Because the kid was rambling, hanging in that half conscious state of speaking words without any actual proper thought or filter behind the process.

It would be pointless to tell Dean now that Bobby had grabbed Sam on his way _out_ of the head scan and that according to what they had scribbled in his file, the exam hadn't found anything serious. If he knew that kid well enough, and Bobby did know him better than most, Dean was about one step away from passing out from the pain alone, which meant that at this point, his processing abilities were reduced to three points: pain, leg and breathing.

"Aha!" Bobby let out quietly in triumph, staring at the locked box marked 'opiates'. There was nothing he could do about his burned to the ground house, or about the evil nasties that were after him and the boys, or even for Sam's broken psych. But there was something he could do for Dean's pain.

Bobby picked up a pair of scissors and used them as leverage to break the lock on the box, smiling in relief when it gave in at first try. Inside, the two bottles of liquid morphine smiled back at him.

Making short work of pulling a syringe out of its plastic wrapper and attaching a needle to it, Bobby carefully drew out a small amount of the clear liquid into the empty chamber before turning his attention back to Dean.

"... believe how strong tho- those motherfuckers wer-were. I could feel my le-leg snapping right off when that thi-thing threw me... do you think that's why Sa-Sam hasn't woken yet?"

"Left or right?" Bobby asked instead, talking over Dean's monologue.

The young man's eyes crossed over the bridge of his nose as he tried to grasp what the hell Bobby was talking about. By the time he'd figured it out –or given up trying- Bobby was already pulling down the edge of Dean's torn up jeans and jamming the needle in the muscle of his left thigh.

"Oh," Dean managed to voice before his eyelids grew heavy and a contented sigh of relief washed over his face.

"Sweet dreams, princesses," Bobby couldn't help but add with a smug smile as he closed the ambulance doors on the two snoring Winchesters. They would've killed him if they'd been conscious enough to register his words.

Now, Bobby just had to figure out a place for them to hole up and ditch that very stolen, very much conspicuous ride of theirs. He doubted Dr. EvilBite at the hospital would raise the alarms anytime soon, but ambulances were the sort of thing that people tended to notice and remember. And they really, really needed the world to forget about them for a couple of weeks.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

There was dust and a faint smell of mold in the air and Dean woke up with a sneeze.

"Bless ya!" a Kermit-like, nasal voice said.

The unfamiliar voice made Dean jump to awareness. He was half-laying on an old couch, his casted leg extended in front of him and his left one bent painfully sideways. His neck cracked when he raised his head, looking at his surroundings.

There was a table behind him, the centerpiece of a sort of living room with a fireplace. An open door to the right reveled an old kitchen, the kind that seemed to come straight from cold war times; another door to the left was either the bathroom or a really big broom closet and behind the couch, by the window on the other side of the shed, there was a small cot, currently occupied with what looked to Dean like a giant. Given the amount of leg expanse hanging over the edge of the thing, Dean figured it was probably his sleeping brother.

Outside, Dean could hear nothing but chirping birds and wind, rustling through leaves. No traffic, not even at a distance.

He had no idea where he was.

But unless Sam had learned to speak like a Muppet in his sleep, they were not alone. "Hello? Who's there?"

"Shit!" the same voice spoke, quickly followed by the sound of small feet running across the old, rickety floorboards.

The noise was akin to rats, scurrying to their hiding places and Dean couldn't help the shiver that raced through his skin. He looked around for something to support his weight, remembering that he had ditched his hospital stolen crutches just before he'd jumped into Bobby's hospital stolen ambulance. Thinking about it... man, that was some serious bad Karma points they were adding up there.

It also meant that he had no way to move around. Not that something like that was going to stop him.

Testing his weight on his left leg, Dean gingerly rose to his feet. The room immediately spun around him before settling in a slightly wavering motion. As far as his watering eyes could see, there was no one there other than him and Sam.

Sam.

Jesus. The kid's noggin was already a piece of mush, taking off after imaginary Hell-pals and trying to shoot his own brother… getting rammed by a piece of iron on the side of the head was not an FDA's approved treatment for his condition, Dean was pretty sure of that.

He had no idea what time it was or how long it had been since they had escaped the hospital, but it couldn't possibly be normal for Sam to still be snoozing like that.

With growing thoughts of coma or worse, a dead Sam, Dean attempted one step in that direction and stopped. He needed to go to Sam, check out how his brother was doing, but the distance seemed impossibly long now.

Dean's arms felt like jello, no strength at all to hold his weight as he pushed against the couch. The nearest wall was out of his arm's reach and Dean had no idea how he was going to get there without landing himself on the floor. He was Spiderman trying his first jump in between tall buildings; Superman high on Kryptonite... hell, he was Batman on a bend. And neither of that was getting him closer to that wall.

Busily, sucking air through his nose to combat the pain and willing his one functioning leg to do the work of two, he never heard the cabin's door creak open. Dean was just too occupied staying vertical to even realize that someone else had entered the cabin…

"If I have to pick you off the floor one more time, you're paying for my chiropractor's next appointment, boy," Bobby offered, putting two paper bags on top of the table.

Defeated he even begun, Dean sank back to the couch, his broken leg protesting at the jarring when his body bounced off the seat. Taking a deep breath, Dean swallowed down the pain. "How's Sam doing?"

"He's surviving, same as the rest of us." When Dean looked up again, he found Bobby watching him with a concerned look. "How're you doing, kid?"

"Peachy," Dean said too quickly, no time at all to hide the pain in his voice. It cracked in a miserable way, like he was going through puberty all over again. "Where the hell are we anyway?"

"Middle of nowhere, Montana. Rufus' anti-social cabin," Bobby said, pulling two orange bottles from his jacket's pocket. "Here... managed to get you these," he tossed one of them Dean's way. "Big ones are antibiotic. Smaller ones, a painkiller. Though, you should probably eat something before ta-" Dean was already swallowing a pair of pills from the bottle marked as painkiller. "-king those."

"Why is Sam still out?" Dean asked, looking longingly at the span of ground standing between him and his brother.

"He's not out, he's resting," Bobby assured him. "Even woke up a while ago. Seemed coherent enough."

"Any crazy weirdness? Talking to the voices inside his head?" Dean asked, leaning back against the couch. The pill was already starting to kick in, pulling him into a dual sensation of numbness and floating in the air that meant Bobby had gotten him the good stuff.

"He just woke up long enough to take a leak and ask about you, Dean," Bobby said patiently. "Not really a therapy session."

"Speaking of leak," Dean mumbled, making a half-assed attempt to get back to his feet. It was like the couch had a big, frigging magnet hidden in its depths and Dean's ass was made of iron. Which would totally explain why, as soon as Dean managed a couple of inches away from the damn thing, it pulled him right back down.

The bathroom was right there. Close enough that he could probably just yank his dick out, take aim and...

"Don't you even think about it," Bobby's voice, way too close for comfort when Dean's hand was down his own pants, interrupted his line of thought. And aim.

Dean was pretty sure that what followed was very emasculating and embarrassing for him, most likely revolving around his loaded bladder, his dick, his painkiller-addled brain and Bobby's hands.

Fortunately for Dean, he had no recollection of it.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

The next time Dean woke, Papa Smurf was staring at him. Dean blinked, startled by the pint-sized, bushy bearded image. In the fragment of time it took his eyelids to drop and rise again, however, the space in front of him was empty.

"Mornin'," a voice that was most definitely familiar greeted him.

Dean rolled to a seated position, groaning as he worked the kinks out of his spine. Reorienting himself, he realized he was back on the couch, his casted leg was on fire and Sam was sitting at the table, eating some kind of crunchy cereal that exploded between his teeth every time he took a bite. Across the room there was a TV on, the volume just loud enough for Dean to know that whatever the actors were saying, it wasn't English. It was loud enough for Dean to finally notice that there was a TV in that place at all.

"Morning," Dean mumbled, making it sound more like a question rather than a greeting. The light coming from outside and filtering through the dust-covered windows was too bright and cheerful for the cotton balls taking up space inside his head.

"You feel like eating something?"

Dean forced his brain to start working again, wiping the crust out of the corner of his eyes with his thumbs. Maybe if he poked his fingers deep enough he could jump start the damn thing impersonating mush inside his skull?

"Dean?"

Somehow, it must've worked, because it finally clicked that Sam was up and eating and looking all kinds of normal while Dean still felt like crap.

"Hey! You're up," Dean said in a spasm of brilliancy as he twisted to get a better look at Sam. "You doing okay?" he asked, eying his brother more carefully now that his brain was semi-working.

Sam nodded, white knuckling his spoon to keep it from spilling milk all over. He looked tired, dark smudges under his eyes and his hair looked kind of greasy, but other than that there was none of the drooling mess or crazy-eyed stare that Dean had feared Sam would be reduced to after the latest events.

"Headache, some dizziness," Sam confessed, painfully honest as he'd taken to be of late. "But other than that, okay, I guess."

"No-" Dean paused, searching for the best way to check Sam's craziness without calling him nuts. His brain couldn't really come up with one. "So, it's just you and me here?" he added, instantly wishing he could kick himself at the implied '_no__hallucinations__sharing__breakfast__with__you,__loony__bin?_' "I mean…" he tried again, "where's Bobby?"

The squinty look Sam gave him was either a testament to the size of Sam's headache, or a sign of how lame Dean's evasive maneuver had been. "He's out back. Chopping wood," he finally answered. "Apparently, we're in for a chilly couple of nights. Cereal box is about six months past due, but they're not half bad. You want some?"

Dean took a deep breath. The smell that assaulted his nose was acrid and foul and to his surprise, coming from him rather than the cereal. Whatever appetite he might have, dimmed away drastically. God! He really needed a shower.

Staring at the white cast coving his right leg from thigh to foot, Dean felt tired just from thinking about the logistics of getting up, finding something to cover that long extent of lumpiness that was attached to him and finding his way to the shower stand. Assuming the place even had running water.

"Not really hungry," Dean confessed. His eyes traveled to the bathroom and back again as he slumped quietly in defeat.

Still, the prospect of a warm shower and less body odor was far more appealing than sitting in his own filth and Dean came to a quick -if not desperate- decision: Nike had it right. Just do it.

"You really should eat something," Sam nudged. "Those pain pills'll do a number on you if you keep on taking them on an empty stomach."

"Maybe later," Dean said as he pulled himself to his feet. At least this time around, the room actually behaved and stayed put, instead of wavering all around like a drunken hula-hoop dancer.

Eyeing his destination, Dean hobbled the few feet that separated him from his goal, wincing as the pain rose in crescendo with every second he spent with his leg down. Grinding his teeth against the tide, he continued on, trying to breathe through the worst of the knife-like jabs that radiated up and down his leg. If he kept a hand on the wall or furniture along the way, it was almost easy. In that walking-barefoot-over-hot-coals easy way.

"Need any help?" Sam asked.

Risking a glance back, Dean was almost tempted to say yes. He was in pain; the one foot he could use felt like it was stepping on marshmallows, wavering floor that didn't feel at all steady and the general need to just not be alone assaulted him out of nowhere, like a stealthy ninja waiting for him to go sappy.

Sam was on his feet, all ready to race to Dean's rescue. The grip the kid kept on the back of his chair, however, spoke of how dizzy he really was and Dean held back. What a pair they made. The intrepid Winchester brothers! Blow on them hard enough, and watch them crumbled to the ground!

There was really no point in both of them ending in a heap on the floor over a trip to the bathroom. "Nah… I'll manage, don't worry," Dean offered with a smirk that was this close to being true. "Had enough people staring at my bare ass to last me a decade. I can do without your ogling."

"Whatever, dude," Sam said with a smile. There was unmasked gratitude in his eyes when he sank back on his chair. "I'm nauseous enough as it is."

It was meant to be funny, but Dean failed to catch the humor in it. Damn those Leviathans and their freakishly powerful hits.

Dean was sweating by the time he managed to pass the threshold of the bathroom door. Three freaking feet and he felt like he'd just run a marathon.

Broken legs sucked.

The bathroom was tiny, barely more than a hole in the ground to take a leak and a showerhead. Someone –Bobby, almost certainly- had thought ahead and put a cheap plastic chair in the shower stall, something for which Dean was extremely grateful. Sinking heavily into it, Dean took a moment to catch his breath before making short work of taking of his layers of shirts. His black t-shirt, it felt, had become like a second skin that he needed to peel off rather than take off. The jeans, oddly enough, were the easy part. After all, the butchers at the ER had already mangled them to get to his broken leg, so they slid effortlessly down his legs.

Now, to cover up that cast so it wouldn't soak up all the water...

Dean looked around, hoping for some solution to drop out of heavens, because really, all that there was to see in that poor-excuse-for-a-bathroom was accounted for in one glimpse.

His eyes landed on the shower curtain.

There was no telling what had been its original color, but it was yellowish now, covered with black mold spots, like disgusting looking freckles. But it was plastic and it was mostly intact.

Not thinking too much about it, Dean gave it a good yank, pulling it free from the hanging rod with ease. It clashed to the floor with a clatter of snapped plastic rings.

"Everything okay in there?" Sam's disembodied voice echoed through the walls, a hint of concern in his words. "Need any help?"

"'m fine, dude," Dean yelled back, smiling in triumph as he wrapped the plastic around his cast. "Give a guy some me-time, will ya?"

It wasn't pretty and if he moved too much, the whole thing would unwrap and collapse, but it was as much protection for his stupid cast as Dean was about to bother with.

Looking at the water faucet, way up above where he sat in the chair, Dean almost felt like crying. He couldn't reach it from where he was and if he attempted to get up, his leg condom would fall off.

Maybe he should've just waited for Bobby to finish his manly task outside...

Suddenly, the shower curtain rod fell to the floor with a clang. The metal tube bounced twice on the floor before coming to a standstill within Dean's reach.

Dean looked up, dumbstruck. He hadn't pulled _that_ hard, had he? And yet, there it was the evidence, in the ripped wood and the hanging nails that had failed to support the rod any longer after Dean's pull.

Shrugging it off a long overdue bit of luck on his part, given that the stick had fallen _towards_ him, Dean bent at the waist and picked it up. One carefully aimed maneuver of the rod and glorious water was raining down over him. Cold as rain too, but nothing beat the feeling of yuck washing away from his skin.

Maybe, just maybe, Dean could survive in this place until that cast came off.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

Dean was dying.

Well, maybe nothing as overdramatic as a full on organ failure and decomposing, but boredom killed more than bullets. True fact.

Bobby was acting busy as a bee, doing what should've been Dean's and Sam's work of keeping an eye on the Leviathans and the mess they were unleashing in the world, while at the same time taking care of the Humpty Gimpy and Humpty Nutty.

Sam was around most of the time, but he wasn't always _there_. More than once, Dean had heard his brother muttering half muffled words, talking to someone that only he could see; and that was when he wasn't stuck staring off into space, like that crazy lizard chick from Rango.

The TV was useless. The only channels it seemed capable of picking up were either the ones airing Mexican soap operas all day long or TV documentaries that had initially aired before Dean was even born.

And Dean... well, other than his pills and the damned itch that. Would. Not. Let. Go... he had nothing, really.

Going outside was out of the question. The weather had chilled, as promised, making the ground perfect for ice skating but crap for gimpy-walk.

Bobby had eventually stopped by a clinic and found Dean a pair of crutches so that he could move around the house, but the damn things were a foot too short for him and made for an even more awkward hobbling and a sore back than regular crutches usually did.

Dean was trying his best to avoid falling into the trap of spending his days sitting by the window, looking longingly outside. It was too much of a cliché and Dean didn't do cliché. But, with nothing else to do in that cabin, it was getting harder and harder to resist the temptation.

He'd already done the newspaper's crosswords puzzle twice (once with a pencil and once in ink) and the old Soduku puzzles' book that he'd found laying around had burned fiercely in the fireplace when Dean had gotten tired of the damn thing and threw it away. Watching it burn was a hell of a lot more entertaining than adding stupid numbers in predictable sequences.

Of course, staring at the fire in the fireplace was almost as bad as staring out the window. Fire reminded Dean of Bobby's house, burned to the ground. Which reminded him of the things responsible for it, those ugly assed, black-gooed sons of bitches. Which reminded him of Cass.

And Dean really, really didn't want to think about Cass. Stupid, hardheaded, idiot Cass.

Because thinking about the dead angel who had unleashed this new plague on an already broken world would mean that Dean would have to face his own failures at saving the ones he loved and he already had a pretty good reminder of that every time he looked at his brother, thank you very much.

Every time Dean closed his eyes he could see Cass' face, the regret and the fear in his eyes in those final moments. All that nerdy angel had ever wanted was to keep Earth safe from the threat of yet another apocalypse, this time, at Raphael's hands; and while he had accomplished his task and put an end to Raphael and his followers, Cass had also left a legacy the likes of which would see even more suffering for humanity. He brought upon them all a new, bloodthirsty and even more powerful threat, a creature about which hunters knew nothing about and, what little they knew, told them that none, short of God Himself, could defeat them.

And Sam… Sam had stopped the first apocalypse from happening, had faced and conquered Lucifer's possession, only to be left with a soul too broken to be mended, pieces so sharp that they were piercing through his sanity and ripping it apart.

All of that was on Dean. His failure to see the road Cass was heading down; his failure to do the right thing and end Sam's misery back when he'd still had no soul to deal with, before Dean had forced the issue and condemned his brother to a life time of losing his mind.

Dean tossed the TV remote in his hands, watching in pleasure at it broke apart in pieces. It wasn't like he had more than three channels to choose from anyway.

Sam was sleeping –again- and Bobby was out –again- when Dean decided that he was going to shoot his brains out if he stayed cooped up a second longer. He grabbed his coat, pulled the edge of his cut up jeans as far down as they went until reaching the cast, then snatched his crappy crutches from the floor and stepped outside. Ice or no ice, he was going for a 'walk'.

The chilly air was like a jolt of electricity, coursing through Dean's skin; it reminded him that he was still alive. He wasn't desperate enough to venture alone into the woods with his bum leg, but the grounds around the house seemed safe enough.

To the right of the cabin, there was a dirt road, disappearing into the forest like it was one giant, green mouth of brown teeth.

To the left, more trees nesting an open shed, a tarp-covered truck hidden underneath it.

With a sigh, Dean pictured his own car, abandoned back at Bobby's yard, waiting for things to cool off before the older man made the trip back to pick her up. Bobby had assured him that Sheriff Mills was keeping an eye on the place while they were away, but until his baby was back in his sight, there was no convincing Dean that those Levia_things_ wouldn't go back to mess with his car. They were just evil enough to do something like that.

Besides, it wasn't like he could drive with his right leg trapped inside concrete as it was. No. For now, Dean had two options: walk or sit.

The long wooden bench on the front porch looked inviting enough.

The thing cracked and groaned as Dean settled all his weight, but it didn't collapse all together as he'd feared it would.

There wasn't much more to see outside the cabin than there was inside, to be fair. Rufus had picked a place well hidden from view, which meant that other than the ever present mountains decorating the horizon, all Dean could see were trees, trees, bushes and a couple more trees.

Lulled by the steady white noise of the chirping birds, Dean was almost dozing off when he heard a dissonant sound, ripping though his monotony. Nothing more than a gentle rustle of leaves, in the far left bushes.

Looking up, he peered into the wall of trees. The canopy was too thick for any wind to push through and the sound had come from too close to the ground.

Montana had bears, right? Big, grizzly, claw-your-head-out types of bears. Dean was pretty sure of that.

Dean tensed, wondering why the hell he had figured that coming outside without so much as a gun was a good idea.

If a big Grizzly came rushing out of those trees towards him, there wasn't much Dean could do but make sure that the thing had the worst indigestion of its life when it chewed on Dean's ass.

The rustling became more pronounced as something big approached the edge of the tree line and Dean stopped breathing altogether... until he found himself staring at Bambi, instead of Yogi Bear. Well, Bambi's father, from the size of those antlers.

Before Dean could decide if this was just too frigging cute or a sign from above that he'd reached his limit at Nature communion, something moved onto the buck, faster than Dean's eyes could track.

The spray of blood that followed was much easier to follow. "SAM! Get out here!" Dean found himself calling.

Because he had no weapons to fight.

He had no ability to run.

And there was something fucking fast eating Bambi four feet away from him. "SAM!"

Dean was already on his feet, precariously balanced on his good leg and with one of the crutches passing as a club in his hands, when Sam came racing outside. His hair was all over the place and the pillow creases on his cheek made Sam's face look skewed; crust sealed his eyes almost shut like superglue. "W'uhat?"

Dean spared a second to give his still asleep brother the stinky eye. "Open your goddamn eyes and you'll see _what_!" he whispered, exasperated because yelling at this point would only call more attention to their presence.

When Sam's eyes finally opened and Dean saw none of the same horror reflected in his brother's face, he jabbed a finger backwards, pointing to where the mess was happening. He couldn't believe Sam wasn't seeing it. _It_ was quite obvious.

Sam's face remained impassive. "Dude," he said looking over Dean's shoulder, something that, by the way, Dean hated. He didn't need a reminder as to just how friggin' tall his _little_ brother was. "I don't see anything."

"How hard did you hit your head?" Dean stressed, coming short of grabbing Sam's head and pointing his eyes in the correct direction. "You have to be blind to not see the—"

The words died in Dean's throat, along with a small piece of his sanity. There was a pretty good reason why Sam wasn't seeing anything.

There was nothing _to_ seen.

"What the hell?" Dean mumbled, taking a step forward before remembering why that was a bad idea. His feeble balance lost, Dean saw the porch's front balcony, a sturdy piece of compact wood, rushing to meet his teeth like a tank moving in slow motion.

"Woah, there!" Sam huffed, his arm reaching out and saving Dean from a life of mashed food and protein shakes. "I think someone needs to lie down and sleep it off."

"Dude, get off'me," Dean grumbled. He couldn't move his eyes off from the place where he'd seen the buck get eaten. There was absolutely nothing there, not even the blood that had splashed all over the leaves and ground. "It... I was right here, sitting on the bench, bored out of my skull, and then this thing jumped the buck and ate it. There should be blood, and gore and bits of... yuck everywhere!" Dean rambled, head flapping left and right as he tried to look at Sam and the 'murder' scene at the same time. "I don't get it."

Sam stood quiet for a moment, looking down at his brother. "I do," he finally said, pulling Dean with him inside the cabin. He sounded weary, old and wise beyond his years. "Trust me, this is something I know all too well."

That tone, if not the words, made Dean tear his gaze away from the magically vanished ripped-to-shreds Bambi and look at his brother. Watching the pain and discomfort in his brother's eyes, it finally dawned on Dean what Sam was talking about. "I didn't imagine it. It was. Right. There."

Sam didn't answer until he had parked Dean back on that couch and grabbed him a glass of water. Bottled water, because there was no way they were taking their chances with the tap stuff. "How many of those are you taking a day?" Sam asked, picking up the almost empty bottle of painkillers that Dean had left abandoned on the coffee table.

"What are you, Dad?" Dean asked, defiant and defensive. "It's been hours since I took the last one and I know what I saw, Sam," he added, earnestly. "There was something out there."

Sam eyed him critically and Dean resisted the urge to cringe away. Sam was the one with the head-crap, not him. So what if he didn't want to be in pain and took his pills like he was supposed to, because, newsflash! broken legs hurt? So what if he sometimes washed them down with a couple of beers? It wasn't like that was something he'd never done before. "I know what I saw, Sam. It was real."

"Lucifer was pretty real to me until you proved me wrong, Dean," Sam said gently. "And these are pretty heavy painkillers. It's perfectly normal that you get a little confused and see-"

Dean would've punched his brother if that didn't imply having to get up to reach him. "I WASN'T HIGH AND I WASN'T IMAGINING IT!"

He sounded like a toddler and the worst part was, Dean was perfectly aware of that.

"Like it wasn't you who ate that whole pie two nights ago?"

Dean swallowed the urge to break his brother's nose and settled for the less satisfying but equally effective stinky-eye-of-doom. He couldn't believe Sam was bringing that up again.

Bobby had bought a cherry pie a couple of days before. Dean had whined so much about starving on their straight diet of C-rations and scrambled eggs that the older man had relented and gone to the city just to buy the thing.

Bobby had one slice, Sam passed and Dean had two slices, pacing himself to still have some pie left the following day. Come morning, however, the pie was gone, crumbs and all. Despite Dean's denials, accusatory glances were thrown his way, both Bobby and Sam assuming that Dean had just eaten it all by himself.

Which Dean hadn't. And it had pissed him off that one of them, the obvious culprit, was fucking with him by putting the blame on him. Dean suspected Sam, but there was no way to prove it. The bastard was that stealthy.

And now Sam was using _that_ to prove his point and make Dean think he was losing his mind. Ha!

"Look, Dean, I'm just saying," Sam went on, his tone more conciliatory, wisely so, considering the visible anger seething in Dean's stare. "I went outside pretty fast and there was absolutely nothing there. You have to at least consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, your eyes played a trick on you."

Fuck Sam! And the most annoying thing was that he was actually right. It was one thing to find invisible or superhumanly fast beings in their line of work. Hell, he could close his eyes and name at least ten fuglies who could do it. But the buck... there had been nothing supernatural about the animal, which meant that its mangled remains should've still be there, even if the thing that attacked it was long gone.

Dean found himself nodding, which might've given Sam the impression that he was agreeing with him.

"Good, because it's bad enough that one of us keeps seeing things that aren't there. Things would get crowded if you started doing it too," Sam added with a forced chuckle.

Dean forced a smile back and didn't correct him. All he had to do was wait for Sam to take his next nap and go check for himself the place where he'd seen the buck get killed.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

A big thank you to Jackfan2, for making this story so much better! All remaining mistakes are mine. Part 2 should be up in a couple of days ;)


	2. Chapter 2

Dean would rather have taken his little excursion during daylight, but that was not to be, much to his chagrin. Sam had been on his case the rest of the day, making sure that, not only Dean behaved with his pills, but actually ate something other than salted peanuts.

When Sam finally backed off and went to bed, the full moon was the only source of light Dean had to see his way around. A sane person would've left it for the following day, but it was his sanity itself that Dean was trying to protect. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep without knowing for sure what the hell had happened earlier on.

There were stairs.

Dean had totally forgotten about the stairs. But then again, you couldn't exactly remember something you'd not been aware of in the first place, and back when they'd first arrived, 'aware' did not describe Dean's pain-killer-doped-up haze, not in the least. So, fine. The stairs were probably there since like forever.

Ten stairs. He could totally do ten stairs.

Keeping a death grip of the railing, Dean carefully picked a place on the first step to brace his crutch and carefully began his descent. For two insanely tense seconds, he hovered in mid-air, neither foot in contact with a hard surface, before his good leg landed near the rubber base of the crutch, balancing his weight.

One down. All those remaining fuckers to go.

By the time Dean reached the soft, dirt ground, he was ready to call it quits. His good leg was shaking, his arms were trembling, his frigging teeth were rattling inside his mouth like those weird ass things that Spanish dancers clapped in their hands. Everything had turned to jello and Dean was not finding it the least bit amusing.

Taking a minute or twenty to catch his breath, Dean was finally able to reach the spot where he'd seen the buck get killed. Turning on his flashlight, he aimed the feeble beam of light everywhere: at the bushes, at the ground, at the tree trucks near the place where he'd seen it go down. Other than scaring away two owls and a fox, the search was pretty useless.

"Oh c'mon…" Dean murmured and widened the area of exploration.

It was no use, though. There wasn't even the faintest hint of blood, no sign at all that a body had ever been there.

Dean shuddered with more than the night's cold and his own deepening exhaustion. Sam _had_ been right. He'd just imagined it all.

Disgruntled, Dean pulled his coat closer to his body and resigned himself to once again face the Everest of stairs. This had all been a monumental waste of time and energy.

If Dean was being honest with himself, something he avoided as often as he could, there had been loads of weird crap happening around him ever since they'd arrive at Rufus' cabin. And given that Dean had been happily skimming through his recovery on a chemically induced oblivion, thanks to a steady stash of pain meds ever since he'd left the hospital, Dean couldn't deny the possibility that maybe his brain and reality weren't exactly seeing eye to eye.

For one, there was that weird voice that he heard on occasion, a voice belonging to neither Sam nor Bobby, a voice that Dean had been too embarrassed to ask them if they'd heard as well.

And the Smurf. Well, it hadn't actually been blue like Smurfs tend to be, but the thing Dean had _thought_ he'd seen was no bigger than two feet tall, had a big bushy beard and a white cap on his head. Just like Papa Smurf.

Sure, most days for the past week, Dean had woken disoriented and without a clue where he was and why there was a heavy cast on his leg, but that confusion went away after a bit, mostly after he'd rubbed the sleep off his face and had downed his first cup of coffee. Or his first beer, depending which was closer at hand. And no, that wasn't a sign of alcoholism; as far as Dean saw it, it was merely an issue of mobility. He had those now.

But full on imagining things that weren't there? Shit like that hadn't happened to Dean in a very long time.

At first, when his Hell memories had started resurfacing, Dean had found it very difficult to tell what was happening now apart from what had happened before, just like Sam. Sure, Dean hadn't been keeping conversations with Lucifer at the time, but it had taken him a while to stop seeing people's guts hanging out whenever he looked at someone. Or seeing Alastair over his shoulder, like some bloodthirsty crow, whenever he looked in the mirror reflection.

The pills had helped, he guessed. So had the drinking.

But now that he sort of had a handle on that, it scared the crap out of Dean that he might be losing it again. Not now, not when Sam needed him to be the one with a firm grasp on reality.

Dean's mind swirled with panicky thoughts as he walked back. He should've been paying more attention to where he was stepping instead, because not a half hop later, his good foot snagged on something half buried in the ground. Suddenly unbalanced, Dean pitched forward and stumbled. Struggling to stay on his feet, he put his bad foot down and leaned too heavily on the damn too-short-crutch under his arm.

There was no telling which hurt the most: the jolt of pain traveling up his leg as the cast failed to insulate Dean's broken bone from the impact with the frozen ground or the hard metal of the crutch, biting into the tender flesh of his armpit. "Son of a bitch!"

Tears sprung to his eyes, but Dean was more pissed than sad or hurt. First his brain was bailing on him, and now he found himself stumbling in the dark, like some drunk, crazy person. All that was missing now was for Sam to come outside and find him like that. Or Bobby, to return earlier from his latest supply run.

Fortunately for Dean's dignity, Bobby didn't like driving at night and Sam wouldn't be waking any time soon. Dean's magic pills, the ones he'd started taking because there was no way he could keep on waking Lisa and Ben every single night with his screaming nightmares, worked wonders on Sam as well. Didn't stop him from checking out during the day, or having muted conversations with fucking Satan, but it guaranteed that Sam, at least, got a good night's sleep.

Angling the beam of his flashlight down, Dean aimed it at the guilty piece of crap that had almost sent him face planting.

There was a bone sticking out from the ground. A large, white, devoid of any sort of flesh, bone sticking from the ground.

He cursed his gimp leg for not allowing him to crouch down. His only other choice was to sit down and dig the thing out, but with nothing around to grab onto, he'd be spending the rest of the night freezing his butt off. Instead, Dean tried to loosen the dirt around the bone with the tip of his crutch.

Rubber tips, however, worked for shit at digging, and balancing his weight on one foot, while basic for Dean on most days, was impossibly hard when one leg weighed double of the other. Every time Dean managed to get the rubber edge in the right place and dislodge a piece of dirt, his balance was lost and he had to start all over again.

He was pretty sure that that the bone was all that remained of the dead buck; Dean's proof that he wasn't going nuts. He only had to... wait until morning and ask either Bobby or Sam to dig it out for him so that they could finally see that he was right.

Dragging his weary body back to the stairs, Dean looked back. Given what had happened earlier, with the whole buck and blood vanishing in the blink of an eye, there was no way Dean was leaving his sole evidence abandoned like that, all night long.

Easing himself on the stairs, Dean leaned back and readied himself for a long wait.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

"What the hell are you doing there?"

Bobby. Screaming. Not good.

Dean opened his eyes and scrunched his face in annoyance. Bobby was totally scaring the chirping birds away. "Hey, Bobby... I was-" he started, the reason why he was sitting in a flight of frozen steps escaping through his half-asleep brain. He was glad that it was cold enough to stop his cheeks from turning red. Damn Bobby and his ability to make Dean feel like he was five again. He was a grown man, for Pete's sake!

"You were making sure you got pneumonia along with a gimp leg, is that it?" Bobby went on, steamrolling all over Dean's failed attempt at explaining himself in two seconds flat.

Finally remembering why he was out there in the cold, sitting on legs he could no longer feel, Dean looked up. "You have to dig out the bone!"

Which, of course, did nothing to help his case of pleading sanity.

"What the hell are you talking about, boy?" Bobby let out, his roughness slowly giving way to concern. He had that look in his grey eyes, the one that spoke of pity and helplessness over how broken Dean was.

Dean hated that look, even when it was coming from Bobby. "Something weird, like supernatural weird, killed a buck yesterday, right in front of the cabin and now there is a bone buried in the dirt and I need it to prove to Sam that I wasn't imagining things because I'm not insane," Dean explained.

Somehow, that had sounded a lot better in his head. The sneeze that he'd been trying to keep inside, busted out of Dean as he finished, rocking his whole aching body. "Shit!"

Bobby looked back to where Dean had been pointing the whole time, doing his perfect impersonation of Lassie. "Over there?" he asked before turning and walking the small distance.

"There!" Dean directed when he saw Bobby standing directly above the spot. "Right there. It should be easy to see; nearly fell last night when I stumbled over the thing."

Dean had the grace to shut up when Bobby send him a look before resuming his task. It told exactly what the older man thought of the fact that, one: Dean was out since the previous night; and two: that he'd almost fell out there.

There were ants crawling inside Dean's stomach as he watched Bobby hunch down and dig around the dirt with his hands. Dean grunted as he got to his feet, figuring that the older man was taking just too damn long to find something that was right there, near the surface.

The air was heavy, or maybe gravity was being a bitch to Dean that particular morning, but man… he felt like he weighed two tons. On unsteady steps, hobbling actually, Dean made his way slowly towards Bobby. "So, did you find it?"

Bobby looked up at him, holding a small skull in his hand. Some kind of rodent, from the looks of its teeth. Probably a squirrel. Certainly not a buck. "Yeah, I found your bone."

Dean grabbed the thing from Bobby's hand with a frown. "No... no, no, no! This was not what I saw last night," he vented, throwing the small thing away. "It was a long bone, a big bone… Jesus! Fuck!"

Bobby rose to his feet, wiping the dirt off his hands on his jeans. "I think its best we go inside. What do you say, Dean?"

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

Dean refused to get up from the couch the rest of the day. And the day after that. And the one that followed.

He wasn't being emo; he had a cold from the night he'd spend outside and his leg was taking turns in between itching like a herpes-ridden whore – because casts were, apparently, like white, giant zits- and hurting like a bitch –because that's what happens when you stop taking your pain meds because they are making you hallucinate. Also, there was snot and sneezing... not always as separate events.

The couch-attachment had, of course, nothing to do with the fact that, while he remained with his eyes glued to the TV screen, it was easier for Dean to ignore the looks that Sam and Bobby kept throwing his way, as well as make sure that his sight and mind were distracted enough to avoid wondering off into half-assed hallucinations.

And that was what scared Dean the most; the fact that, even though he had stopped with the pills, he was still seeing things.

He hadn't ventured outside again. For one, he did have a cold and no intention to further prove to Bobby that he was actually dimwitted by turning it into pneumonia; also, Dean was sure that the minute he stepped outside, some other animal would get killed, or a tree would start walking, or the frigging mountains would burst into song and dance and that was the last thing that he needed.

So, it was Mexican soap operas and Wild Life programs for him. And a sore butt because, as it turned out, sitting on your ass all day long was actually tiring.

Every time Dean turned his attention away from the TV, however, the Smurf was back. The more time Dean spent inside, focus on not looking, the more he saw the little thing everywhere.

When Dean woke in the morning, almost every day now, the little bearded man was there, standing by the coffee table, picking fallen salty peanuts from the floor and mumbling, "Such a mess, such a mess, such a messy mess."

Dean usually spared a look around the living room, trying to gauge whether Sam or Bobby was seeing any of that, but most of the times he was either alone or they simply weren't looking.

Figuring that closing his eyes again and ignore the half muted words was the sanest course of action, Dean usually did just that. When he looked again, seconds later, the vision was gone. Almost every single time.

One time, Dean had woken to find it staring at his cast, like it was trying to melt it with his gaze alone, breathing hard on Dean's unprotected toes. It had freaked Dean out, made him jump out of the couch and land on the floor with a pained grunt. Bobby, cooking dinner at the time, had just stared at him until Dean had lamely whispered "Spider".

Then there were the few times in the bathroom, where Dean would catch a fleeting glance of _something_ in the corner of his eye, balancing from the –now bare- shower curtain rod that Sam had managed to put up again, or playing with the shower head or even –and that had to be the weirdest of all of Dean's hallucinations- _soap-skating_ on the shower stall.

A few days after that, the thing had started looking back at him, not bothering to hide anymore. Like it was defying Dean to acknowledge his presence and out himself as an insane person. Dean was too miserable and in pain to give it the satisfaction.

Right now, it was yanking a long, thin branch across the living room. It waved at Dean as it passed, sleazy smile on his tiny face, like it was the most normal of things.

"Hey, Sam," Dean called out, slightly panicked, pointedly ignoring the racket Papa Smurf. Instead, he twisted around and looked at where his brother sat by the table. Sam had a book in his hands, the third one he'd gone through, from Rufus' small stash, ever since his concussion had backed off enough for him to be able to focus on the small print. There was no way a book on seeds and herbs could be compelling enough to stop Sam from noticing what was going on in there. "Grab me a cup of coffee, will ya?"

Sam gave him a look above the edge of the open book. "There is no coffee, remember?" he said, sounding half annoyed, half exasperated. "You drank the last of it yesterday. The whole pot."

Dean stared at his brother. Right. Just like he'd eaten the whole pie.

Either they had some coffee addict, pie-eating, five foot tall rats in the cabin, or one of them was eating and drinking in his sleep. And Dean's bladder assured him that it hadn't been him, though there was no convincing Sam of that. "Sam… are you," Dean started again, wishing for a nice way to phrase what he needed to ask. "You sure it isn't you doing these things? I mean, without knowing… maybe like, sleep walking?"

Sam gave him no answer other than a raised eyebrow and a huff, before closing his book and walking outside. Because _he_ could do that, the two legged bastard.

"I was just asking!" Dean yelled at Sam's retreating back, looking longingly at his crappy crutches.

Sitting back, Dean let his head fall back into the couch. There was a hole in the ceiling wooden planks, like a black eye staring back at him. Frowning at him.

Dean felt bad. He knew how sensitive Sam was about the whole head thing he had going. And of course, unless Dean came right out and confessed that he was experiencing the same, Sam would only see Dean's questions as lack of trust in him. Broken minds sucked worse than broken bones.

The sound of a hand saw, going back and forth on wood, coming from the kitchen pulled Dean's attention away from his funk. "What the hell…"

Pulling himself to his feet, Dean bit down a grunt of pain and grabbed the wall for support. From where he stood, he could only catch a small portion of the whole kitchen.

The tree branch was on the floor, shaking as someone cut into it. Already all around it was a mess of leaves, dirt and sawdust.

Hands on the wall, Dean moved a couple of inches further, trying to see deeper into the kitchen. Papa Smurf was sweating and cursing, pulling a saw almost as big as he, yakking at the branch. With a happy yelp on the small man's part, the branch snapped, leaving a sharp end.

Dean gulped. That thing was sharp enough to gut a man. He closed his eyes, willing the vision to go away.

This had nothing to do with Hell; there were no Smurfs in Hell. Maybe a couple of those Teletubbies creeps, but no Smurfs. This was plainly insane. "You're losing your marbles here, Dean," he whispered to himself, feeling the sweat pooling at his back. "You're gonna open your eyes and there will be nothing on that kitchen floor but grease."

And if that wasn't the case, Dean swore to himself: if that thing was still there with its sharp stick, he was going to fetch his shotgun and shoot it, hallucination or not.

"You feeling okay, son?"

Crap.

Bobby.

"Yeah… never felt better," Dean replied with a shit-eating grin. It sounded fake even to his ears.

"So… any particular reason why you're standing there, with your eyes closed and grabbing the wall like your life depends on it?"

Dean opened his mouth, planning to tell the first lie that came to his mind. He could still see the dirt left behind by the hallucination's shenanigans on the kitchen floor, even if the nasty looking branch was gone. He was losing his mind, and Sam was losing his mind and at least one of them in that cabin had better be wise to the matter. "I think I'm seeing things, Bobby," he confessed.

To his credit, Bobby didn't deck him or run for the hills. "Seeing things as in... Sam-seeing things?"

Dean could only nod, the weariness and pain of the last few days taking hold and robbing him of all his remaining strength. He switched his hold on the wall for a firm grasp on Bobby's arm. Somehow, the warm flesh underneath felt safer than the hard wood.

"Come on, let's get you sitting down before you _fall_ down," Bobby said gently, guiding Dean back to the couch.

Dean landed with a weary sigh, refusing to meet the older man's inquisitive eyes. Which really was useless now that he'd let the cat out of the bag. "So, you're seeing Lucifer as well... or is it Hell...?" Bobby probed gently.

"I'm seeing all kinds of strange crap, Bobby," Dean confessed, massaging his head. God, this whole hallucinating thing was giving him a headache. "But not that kind of crap. It's like _here_, but a weird here, you know what I mean?"

Judging from how high Bobby's brow rose at that, no, he didn't know what he meant. "What exactly are you seeing?"

Dean leaned back, checking the kitchen floor. "Do you see anything on the kitchen floor?" he asked, hopeful that Bobby would prove him wrong and actually say yes.

"No," he answered, after giving it a good long look. "I mean it could use a mop, but we ain't princesses in a castle."

The younger hunter sagged deeper into the couch. A loose spring dug into the left side of his ass but he didn't even care. "So you don't see a mess of dirt, leaves and sawdust?"

Bobby looked again, as if he could've missed it the first time. "Is that what you're seeing?"

Dean nodded, reaching for the bottle of painkillers. There was no point in being crazy AND in pain.

"Why is there sawdust on the kitchen floor?"

Dean swallowed the pill dry before letting out an equally dry chuckle. "Because there was a tiny man there, sawing a sharp stick. I think he may be out to kill us all. That, or I'm going insane."

"You checked for EMF, sulphur, ectoplasm... all the usual suspects?"

Dean nodded, disheartened. He was a gimp and the world was going down the crapper faster than he could do something about it, but he was still a hunter.

"I don't think it's catchy, son," Bobby said, finally taking a seat beside him. "All of this stuff with Sam's noggin... I know this is a hard time for you, for all of us..." the older man went on, a strong hand gripping Dean's shoulder and holding tight.

It was the same shoulder where he still bore the mark Castiel had left on him, more than four years ago. The grip pressed against his skin and Dean could feel each edge of a digit, their touch overlapping like waves of comfort.

"... this whole thing with your brother, and losing the angel like that... I guess what I'm saying is that no one would blame you for cracking under the pressure, Dean," Bobby pointed out, like he was giving Dean permission to do just that. "We know you're human, just like the rest of us, and Lord knows you're way over due for some good ol' mental breakd—"

Dean pulled back, effectively dislodging Bobby's hand, and turned the TV on. It wasn't like he didn't know that Bobby's intentions were the best, letting Dean off the hook as his mind slipped away. It was the same approach the older man had taken to Sam's hallucinations and blank stares and Dean couldn't disagree more.

Sam needed grounding in reality, something that he had fortunately found in Dean's stability and in his own pain. And Dean needed his stability to keep his brother grounded in reality.

Neither of them needed someone telling them that it was okay to be seeing things that aren't' there.

"My favorite soap opera is about to start," Dean offered, his attention already focused on the TV as he flipped through all three channels. One of them had better be airing _some_ soap opera.

Bobby was a smart guy; he knew when his company was no longer wanted.

Which was why, Dean figured, the older man sat himself more comfortably on the sofa next to him and settled himself for the long haul of bad TV.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

Sam found them both asleep when he came back from his walk, Dean's cast over Bobby's lap and Bobby's head bent backwards at an angle that promised severe pain when he woke up.

When he'd left, Sam had just wanted some distance from Dean's veiled accusations that his head was actually worse than Sam thought. Like Lucifer had occasional spouts of the midnight munchies and had decided to eat a whole pie and a pot of coffee while Sam was looking the other way.

Sure, Sam knew that he wasn't the most reliable person as of late, but he was doing so much better in telling apart what was real and what wasn't. Dean's lack of trust, more than hurt him, made Sam doubt himself.

It had felt nice to get out of that stifling cabin, though, even if his hallucinations had decided to join him on his trek.

Lucifer had decided to 'walk the dogs', as he has put it, which meant that, for most of the way, Sam had to studiously ignore the two hellhounds that Lucifer was pulling on a leash. A few times, it felt like there was a third leash, pulling at Sam's throat every time he ignored the fallen angel.

The cut in his hand was mostly healed by now, would've been completely healed by now if Sam stopped poking at it whenever he needed a proof of reality. For now, it still hurt enough to make Lucifer's whiny voice go away when Sam pressed that scar hard enough.

Sam wished he no longer needed for such subterfuge to keep himself grounded. He wished his head would get better so that he would be one less thing for Dean to worry about, but life seemed to have only lemons for the Winchesters and, for his part, Sam was sick and tired of lemonade.

Dean, he knew, was just as sick and tired as him.

It hadn't surprised him that Dean had started to lean so heavily on the painkillers and booze. Always one ill-equipped to deal with loss, Dean had steadily become worse and worse with every other ally and friend they had lost.

Sam's mind was scrambled, but he wasn't forgetting about everyone Dean had lost in less than a week: Lisa, Ben... and now Castiel. Himself as well, if he was counting brain-damaged brothers in the list. If Bobby had been inside that house when it burned, Sam didn't want to imagine what Dean would've done, because he was pretty sure he wouldn't like it.

Watching Dean sleeping like that, relaxed and at peace, could've fooled Sam into believing that everything would be okay. But Sam wasn't a fool.

There was a long wooden stick leaning against the living room table, perched in between two chairs. Sam picked it up, admiring the craftsmanship of the piece, all smooth angles and carved handholds. It was also, Sam noted, the perfect height to fit under Dean's arm, unlike those metal crutches that he kept complaining about being too short.

Bobby, it seemed, had gone all the way to find Dean some proper support to wander around and Sam kicked himself. He should've thought about it, knowing perfectly well that his brother loved being cooped up like that just about as much as Sam did.

"Hey, old men," Sam called out, putting on his cheery, game-face. Two sets of bleary eyes zeroed on him, as both Dean and Bobby roused from sleep.

Slightly embarrassed by the position he found himself in, Dean slowly pushed his cast out of Bobby's lap and bend down, reaching for his crutches. "Shuddup, Gretel."

"Here, try this one instead," Sam offered as he handed Dean the brand new crutch.

A smile of appreciation washed over Dean's sleepy face as his eyes traveled over the long walking stick with the same level of admiration Sam had felt. "Thanks, Sammy," he whispered before making his way to the bathroom with more ease than ever.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

Bobby felt bad for what he had said to Dean. Sure, he loved both Winchesters like the sons he never had, but that didn't gave him magical abilities to always say the right thing. Calling Dean crazy when, clearly, that boy needed someone to assure him that he wasn't losing his mind, had been genius on his part.

The thing was, Bobby had been painfully honest in his assessment because he knew Dean had been lied to way too many times. Bobby had no intention to join those ranks.

Didn't mean he didn't feel guilty, though. Which was why he had driven all the way to town to get Dean some pie. The last one had mysteriously disappeared and even if Dean had gone behind their backs and eaten the whole thing, like Sam seemed sure he had, Bobby figured he owed the kid another one. Chocolate this time, because nothing said 'I'm sorry' better than chocolate.

Bobby had thought about something handier to give Dean to ease his imprisonment in the cabin, but Sam had been faster than him. That walking stick that the kid had gotten for his brother was a sturdy and well-crafted thing, something that Bobby had no idea Sam could even do.

He was glad he had though. Dean deserved people looking after him for a change.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

"Ingrate!"

Dean woke with a start and a sharp pain in his ankle. "Ow! Damn it!" Sleepy brain barely registering anything but the throb at the back of his good leg, Dean looked down just in time to see Papa Smurf lift the hem of his jeans, and hover open mouthed over his ankle, teeth poised to sink in again.

"Serves you right, big foot!" And with one more bite, he was gone.

"Son of bitch!" Dean let out, contorting to look at the damage. He stopped himself before pulling the blue denim up. This was all inside his head, Dean reminded himself. There was no not-blue Papa Smurf walking around the house, therefore, there was nothing wrong with his ankle.

Still, it hurt like a bitch.

"Woke up on the wrong side of be—well, couch?" Sam greeted him from the kitchen. The smell of fried bacon wafted through, making Dean's mouth water.

By all reasoning, Dean should be stuffed enough to last him a whole week without eating. Taking no risks with the glorious chocolate pie that Bobby had brought them the previous day, they'd attacked the thing like there was no tomorrow. Well, there was a tomorrow, but it was one without pie.

Still, there he was, stomach rumbling at the delicious smell coming from the nearby division. "There'd better be some of that bacon left for me, or wrong side won't even begin to cover it," Dean yelled back with a grin as he made his way towards the bathroom.

Setting the walking stick against the wall, Dean leaned his hip against the sink as he brushed his teeth. The man looking back at him from the other side of the mirror looked gaunt.

Dean had been doing his best to avoid his own reflection for the past days. Mirrors were never welcome when his mind was playing tricks on him and now was no different.

But his leg hurt a little less that morning, and Sam was up and fixing them breakfast in the kitchen and Bobby had promised that he was going to go pick up his car as soon. So, for the first time in way too many days, Dean felt good about things; good enough to brave a look in the mirror.

Unlike he feared, however, there were no bloody walls or screaming souls, no echoes of Hell coming through the reflective surface, no Alastair over his shoulder. Just his face.

He needed a shave. Badly. Just because they were living in the middle of the woods, didn't mean he had to look like a caveman. "Sam... have you seen my shaving kit?"

Sam's head peeked in the door a couple of minutes later, a small, black leather bag in his hand. "Think you can handle this without giving yourself a Columbian necktie?"

"Hardy, har, har," Dean laughed without humor. "I've been shaving for a lot longer than you, baby-cheeks."

Sam's smile was almost carefree. "Well, I'm just saying... someone will have to wipe the blood clean when you—"

Sam cut himself short and Dean looked back, his stomach sinking to the ground as he thought that Sam was having another one of his absences. Or maybe he was seeing Lucifer, taking a dump in the toilet.

Sam's eyes, however, were clear and focused, staring at Dean's feet. "You started shaving your legs too?"

Confused, Dean followed Sam's gaze down. Sure enough, there was blood pooling under his left foot. The one he'd been studiously ignoring ever since his hallucination had decided to make chow out of his ankle. "You can see that?"

Sam's eyebrow arched up. "Humm... yeah," he said, making it sound like Dean was the weirdest person on Earth. "Is there a reason why your blood should be invisible?"

The surge of hope that filled Dean's chest made him ignore the jib in his little brother's words altogether. Shuffling forward, Dean pulled the toilet seat down and sat. Angling for a better look, he crossed his good leg over the casted one and examined the spot that had been bothering him since he'd woken. He pulled back the edge of his jeans and sure enough, there was an oozing bite on his ankle.

Sam's mop of a head filled Dean's vision as he knelt in front of him to take a closer look. "Is that... is that a rat bite?"

He sounded, at once, disgusted and horrified. Dean wasn't the only one who didn't like rodents.

"You see the bite? For sure? No question about it?" Dean asked again, unable to hide the excitement in his voice.

Sam gave him a funny look. "Why the hell are you so psyched over a rat bite?" he asked. "Those things are filled with diseases, you know?"

Dean was about to announce that he was just happy because he wasn't crazy after all, that he hadn't been imagining anything, that it was all real, when his brain kicked in and he realized what a douche-bag move that would be.

Just because Sam seemed to be coping with his own hallucinations didn't mean that he would like having Dean rub in his face that he was free of his; even less that they had never been hallucinations to begin with.

"I'm excited," Dean said in a rush, knowing he'd been silent for too long, "because now I have something to hunt."

Sam gave him a look that spoke of just how much he thought of Dean's new entertainment. "That bored, are you?"

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

First step was figuring out what the hell the thing was. Rats, and all other physical things, Dean could pretty much put aside. He was the only seeing this little man around the house, which meant that it probably wasn't corporeal most of the time or else Sam or Bobby would've stumbled across him at some point.

It couldn't be a spirit or a poltergeist, as Dean had initially thought, because those always left behind a trail a mile long on the EMF reader and Dean's had remained silent every time he'd turned it on.

Other than playing a number on Dean's brain and making him think that he was losing his mind, Papa Smurf had been pretty harmless so far. Well, there had been the ankle-biting episode, but given how much that had done for his mental health, Dean was putting that one on the good-stuff column. And if that had been the same thing Dean had seen jumping that buck, there was no guarantee that harmless equaled not dangerous.

What intrigued him most was the fact that neither Sam nor Bobby seemed to catch the slightest inkling as to the presence of the being inside the house while Dean had seen it from day one. No matter how shy or bold the being chose to be, Dean could always see him.

And Dean knew he wasn't like Sam; there was nothing paranormal or beyond human about him. No freaky ESP stuff about his noggin. He didn't get any tingly feeling in his spidey-senses when it came to ghosts or demons, no visions, no ability to move things with the power of his mind. Nothing.

Truth be told, neither did Sam these days, thank God. Still, the fact remained that it was mighty weird the way Dean was, for some reason, being singled out when it came to this particular creature.

So, either this creature had the ability to chose who saw it and had decided to mess with Dean's head, or it was something that only Dean could see for whatever freaky reason. Hell, it could even be a mix of both.

An image of the little man, kneeling on the floor by the couch, angrily picking salted peanuts from the floor flashed through Dean's mind.

At the time, more concerned about ignoring it rather than observe it, Dean hadn't realize an important fact. It wasn't the peanuts that the creature had been bothered with at the time. It was the salt.

Suddenly, what this creature was became so obvious that Dean felt like an idiot for not having realized it before.

Fairies.

They had a frigging, hairy fairy in the cabin.

Despite the fact that he was pretty sure that he was right about this, Dean didn't share his findings or plans with either Bobby or his brother. Even as he kept trying to convince himself that there was no point in bringing more hunters to the party when he was the only one who could see the game, a small part of him was still afraid that the bite on his ankle was really from a rat, even though none seemed to be about.

Taking advantage of Bobby's trip back to South Dakota to tow his car in, Dean put his plan into action as soon as Sam went out to take another of his walks.

It was easy, really. All he needed was a big bag of salt.

When he was ready, Dean planted himself comfortably in the couch, turned the TV on and waited. It didn't take long for him to start hearing the shuffling of small feet around the house.

Keeping track of Papa Smurf's wanderings, Dean waited until the being was closer to him before he opened his hand. The grains of salt that he'd been holding, fell to the floor with a muffled pelted sound.

"Son of a bitch!" the Kermit-like voice muttered. There was more shuffling of feet and then a quiet "One... two... three... four..."

Easily rolling on his stomach, Dean peered down. Sure enough, the being that had been teasing him from day one of their arrival at the cabin, was on the floor, counting salt grains like his life depended on it.

Buck naked too, now that Dean was looking close enough to catch his furry little butt, sticking up obscenely in the air.

"You're a fairy," Dean announced in triumph. It was the only possibility, now that he thought about it. The only supernatural creature that Dean would forever Dean be able to see, because he'd been a 'guest' in the Fae world.

"You're an ass," Grumpy replied as he turned, cursing when he lost track of his count. "One... two..."

"I'm an ass? You're the one who's been fooling around, making me think I was going insane, making me _look_ insane," Dean pointed out, pouring a couple more grains just for spite. "AND... you bit me."

The little being looked up from his count, a row of needle-sharp teeth, that Dean hadn't quite noticed before, adorning his tiny mouth. "Served you well... I carved you the perfect crutch, you damn gimp, and you ate all the pie!"

Dean blinked. So that was what the tree branch had been for! It certainly was better than as a sharp stake to kill them all. "Thanks for that," Dean offered sincerely. And then it dawned on him. "You ate that first pie. And the coffee?"

Another wide grin answered the hunter. "I was hungry and I happen to love pie. And coffee. Do you know how long it had been since I've eaten anything but birds and deer?" More salt found its way to the ground, making the small man swear like a sailor and start all over again. "Will you stop that?"

"No," Dean answered with a grin of his own. As far as he knew, there was no way of getting rid of one of the Fae people other than the spells in that book that they'd gotten from the Irish watchmaker. That book, however, like many others that they'd picked up along the way, had burned alongside Bobby's house and library. "Tell me what you're doing here. Are you working for Oberon? Did he send you to kill me?"

"Oberon? _Oberon_!" the little man sputtered, scattering all the salt grains he'd collected so far. His face, pale until that moment, grew red as a pepper. "Do I look like I take orders from that cat-faced, shit-for-brains, little-princess snoozedoozle? I'd rather fuck a troll!"

Dean's eyebrows arched. Actually, he had no idea what Oberon was like because, fortunately, he had no recollection of his time on 'the other side'. And if he were to believe what that over-glittered lady, their very own 'fairy expert', had said about the fate of those brought in to 'service Oberon'... Dean didn't want to remember it ever.

But cat-faced, shit-for-brains, little-princess snoozedoozle seemed about right for any entity that went around stealing people from their homes and basically enslaving them. "So you're not his little bitch?"

For a moment there, as the fairy rose to his feet and threw him a heated look, Dean thought that he was going to bite him again. Dean grabbed another handful of salt, just in case.

Carefully eyeing Dean's hand and his implied threat, the fairy sat back down. His eyes, of a disturbing violet color, skimmed higher, peering at the hunter's face. "You know... I was curious about why you could see me," the fairy said, going back to his counting. "I mean, for years that other hunter came and went from this place, sometimes alone, sometimes with more of your kind, but never once did any of them ever catch so much as a sniff of my presence. But you, a first born who can see fairies... you were one of Oberon's, am I right? You're the _little__ bitch_ here, not me," he finished with a loud cackle.

Dean leaned forward, just enough to reach the fairy, before smacking him upside the head, dislodging his white cap. Underneath, the creature had a wisp of blue hair and pointy ears.

It hissed at Dean, like a pissed off cat, before picking up his beanie and carefully putting it back. "That's what I get for doing my job," the fairy muttered under his breath, turning his back on Dean. "See if I care next time around."

"What job?" Dean jumped in, his suspicions peeking up. So far, he had dubbed this guy all but harmless, with none of the evil streak of the last fairy with his red cap, the one that had been sent after him. Maybe he was even telling the truth, claiming to hate Oberon.

"I'm a hobgoblin, you ass," the fairy said, still pissed off. Which, given its pint size, was kind of funny. "It's what we do. We help around the house, do this chore here and that chore there and we collect our dues in food. Why do you think this cabin is still standing after all these years of neglect?"

Dean looked around the place, confirming what he'd seen a million times before, since he first woke and found himself stuck there. The ceiling beams were cracked and blackened by the fireplace smoke; there was too much smoke coming from the fireplace because the chimney was clogged; the furniture seemed clean, until you moved anything a few inches aside and the perfect drawing of its shape was left there to mark its place.

"Well," Dean said with a smirk, swinging his gaze back the goblin. "Hate to break it to you, but you're not doing such a great job."

"Screw you. I haven't eaten anything but small birds and de—"

"-deer, yeah, I heard you the first time," Dean cut in. He eyed the fairy critically. It wasn't like being abducted by fairies made him an expert on the matter, but it struck Dean as odd that such a being would remain in the same place when there was no one around to reward him for his work. "How long have you been here, anyway?"

The fairy stopped his count and closed his eyes. Above his head, the number fifty-seven appeared in a sparkle of tiny fireworks.

"Nice trick," Dean let out, sounding bored. "Think you can use words instead?"

The hobgoblin opened his violet eyes to give him a look. "That's the number of grains, you troll," he informed. "Don't wanna lose my count again. And I've been here for half of that."

Dean rolled his eyes up as he did the math. "That's a really long time to be stuck in one place," he ruled after a bit. He could almost sympathize with the little guy. After all, Dean was stuck in there for over a week and he was ready to blow his brains out. "Why are you even here and not, you know... wherever you fairies live?"

"Because my car broke down." The answer was dripping with sarcasm. More salt found its way to the floor as retaliation and the hobgoblin's face grew redder. "I was cast out, okay? Oberon banned me from the realm. You happy now?"

Well, at least that explained why he hated the fairy's king. "Why?"

The sparkling number morphed from fifty-seven back to fifteen, which made Dean feel kind of bad for all the salt he'd been accumulating on the floor.

The hobgoblin sunk lower on the carpet. Even his white beanie seemed depressed.

"I was a soldier over there, you know?" the fairy told him, violet eyes shiny with longing. "And when all the other goblins and brownies decided to stand against Oberon and his rule, I fought my own brothers, killed my own kin because I believed it was the right thing to do. Because, despite what I am, I believed in order."

Dean shifted uncomfortable in his seat. Suddenly, he really, really did not want to know about the fairy's story.

"In the end, when our side won, he cast me away, along with all the other goblins," the fairy went on. "Trust issues, he claimed. Because of what I am, he couldn't trust me. The prick."

A while back, Dean would've been angry for the unfair punishment the fairy had suffered. The little guy had chosen his side, gone against every instinct engraved in his species and fought for what he believed in. And he'd been punished for that.

Now, though... it was hard to judge the king of fairies' actions when Dean had finally understood how ugly free will could turn. No matter how good the intentions, it would always result in everything blowing up in people's faces. Or fairies' faces, for that matter. "Makes you wanna go back and stick a knife between his ribs, doesn't it?"

The fairy pondered the idea, an evil smile spreading through his thin lips as he imagined Oberon bleeding. "That was all I could dream about, at first you know?" he confessed. "I would come up with a thousand and one ways to go back, sneak my way into his inner circle and gut him in front of the whole court," the fairy told, his lithe body mimicking the actions, quick jabs of empty hands killing imaginary kings. "But now… I've grown used to being here. In there, I was just one more fairy, a low rank soldier. In here, I'm special… and there is no one to judge me."

Dean gave him a look. He supposed the little guy was being honest, at least in his own head.

"Besides," the fairy went on, "I know I wouldn't be able to hold myself if I was ever back there. Oberon is well full of himself already. No need for me to prove him right by widening his belly button."

Dean had no chance to say anything. The door creaked open, revealing a flushed Sam. Out of habit, Dean searched his brother for any clue that he was seeing what Dean was seeing, but there was no reaction to either the fairy sitting on the floor or the glowing numbers above his head. "Someone grabbed your ass?" Dean asked, forcing himself to not look at the fairy as well. "You look like that one time when that old lady tried to get into your pants… Gert, was it?" he added with a snigger.

"Shuddup," Sam grumped, little brother indignation all over his red face. He stepped into the kitchen, disappearing for a few seconds before returning with a water bottle. "We've been cooped up in here for long enough… I went for a run."

Dean's eyebrow arched up. "Okay," he let out slowly and carefully. Normal people ran for sports all the time, right? There was no reason at all for Dean to assume that Sam was running from _someone_ rather than towards something, right?

"Why is there salt all over the floor, Dean?"

Dean looked down. Shit. In the middle of all the crap that he could see and Sam couldn't, Dean had lost track of the stuff that Sam _could_ see. "I thought I'd heard something. Figure it would be wiser to keep some salt at hand, just in case," Dean offered lamely.

Sam gave him a look that clearly said that he wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or concerned with his brother's odd behavior. Guess that made two of them.

"You do know that there's a line of salt crusted in the foundations of the cabin, right? Bobby mentioned it a couple of times."

Dean gave him a circular nod that wasn't yes but wasn't no either. "Better safe than sorry?"

"Yeah, well," Sam said, definitely opting for 'annoyed', going back into the kitchen and exchanging the water bottle for a broom. "Whatever this is, it's pretty frigging far from a circle, Dean."

Before Dean could open his mouth, Sam had taken a swipe of the salt on the floor and freed the fairy in the process.

The hobgoblin gave Dean the finger before disappearing from view. "Great. That's just… great," he muttered.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

Dean watched the door close, leaving him alone once again. Sam was out on a supply run and Bobby was gone again, barely minutes after coming back with the Impala.

Ever since the 'event' with the salt and the hobgoblin's escape, Dean had seen neither hide nor hair of the fairy. It was hard to guess if that was because he was afraid or mad at Dean.

Sam's laptop, fortunately still in the car when the whole mess at Bobby's had gone down, had been the first thing that Sam had retrieved from the Impala as soon as Bobby had her parked outside.

Dean hobbled to the table where Sam had left it, one of those net stick-thingies still attached to one of its ports.

Hobgoblins, Dean soon found out through his research, were like the tricksters of fairyland.

Most of what the hobgoblin had told him fit with what Dean found online. Soldiers of fairyland, hobgoblins were close cousins of brownies, sharing their attachment to house chores. They were also mischievous creatures that could shapeshift, read people's minds and alter reality around them. And, like dragons, they loved gold. Hoarded the thing, actually.

A nagging suspicion started to form in Dean's mind. He could go as far as believing the fairy's story about Oberon being a dick, but its attachment to that cabin seemed fishy to his hunter instincts.

As far as Dean knew, Oberon had, at least, gotten that part right. You can't change what you are.

For all the time he'd been trapped in there, Dean was sure he'd seen every square inch of that cabin, save for the basement. Nothing but C-rations and dust, Bobby had said. Dean thought that maybe it was time he saw that for himself.

The stairs to the basement were, obviously, crappy and steep. Because that was just the way Dean's luck ran these days. Figuring that he had less chances of falling down and breaking his neck without his crutch, Dean left the thing at the top of the flight of stairs and grabbed hold of the rotten banister. He pushed on it, testing its ability to take his weight without crumbling apart, and once he was satisfied, hopped down.

The descent was slightly easier than the one he'd tried outside, almost a week before, but he was still drenched in sweat when his good foot finally hit the unpaved floor at the bottom.

Flicking the lights on, Dean wasn't sure what he would find in there. C-rations and dust, he hoped.

It was like stepping inside Scrooge McDuck's vault. The golden glow, fed by the feeble light-bulb hanging from the ceiling, at the end of the steps, filled the entire basement like a yellow mist. The gold was… everywhere.

There were small hills of the stuff, piled together in several spots; there were golden objects, from crowns to tableware, all over the place; jewelry, coins, frigging bricks made of gold...

Dean's breath caught in his chest. He was certain he had never seen that much gold put together. Twenty-six years worth of piling it up, he figured.

Taking a tentative step into the vault –it was impossible to keep thinking of it as a mere basement- Dean grabbed onto one of the support beams and carefully bent down towards one of the tallest mounds. The golden necklace he picked up felt real in his hands, but given the fact that Bobby had been there several times and had failed to mention that they were rich, Dean figure that no one else –banks included- would be able to see it either.

"It's a shame, really… Bobby could use a new house," Dean muttered to himself.

"It's not yours to spend, even if you could," the Muppet like voice yelled, anger in his every word. "You really shouldn't have come down here, Dean."

Dean spun around, too fast for his good leg to keep up. The necklace fell to the floor with a sound of tingling coins as Dean dropped it to grab the pole with both hands.

Heart racing, his eyes scanned the dim interior; he couldn't see the fairy anywhere. "I really doubt that you got all of this from some eccentric, rich old aunt that decided to make you her heir," he replied. "How much of it did you steal from Oberon, huh? How much did you steal from the people around here?"

One of the small hills of gold fell apart as the fairy stepped from his hiding place behind a tall cabinet, every shelf filled with square boxes of ready-to-eat meals. In his small hand, there was a long, shiny dagger. Something ceremonial made of, like everything else, gold. The fairy held it like someone with experience. "I brought only what I was due… and people lose a lot of things in these woods… I didn't steal a thing."

Dean eyed him carefully. He had only one weapon to fight with, and one weapon alone. But he had to play it carefully. "Do you mind?" he asked, already easing himself down to sit on the gold covered floor. The grimace in his face was part real, because his leg really wasn't finding all that exercise amusing, and part because he had spotted a cup nearby that would do just fine for his plan. "So, Oberon was right after all, hum? You really can't trust a goblin."

The fairy was on him faster than Dean could see him move. Angry violet eyes stared at him from just inches away, light stealing a glint of a golden out of the blade in the hobgoblin's hand. "I gave him everything, did everything that he asked of me," he spat in rage. "And what do I get in return? A kick in the butt! So yeah, you can't trust a goblin, particularly a pissed off one."

"And now that I've seen your retirement savings?" Dean ventured, guessing what the fairy's next move would be.

Predictably, the fairy charged.

Dean managed to roll away just as the goblin swung the sharp dagger at his chest. The edge of the blade skimmed through his casted leg with a jarring sound of nails on chalkboard.

Hastily picking up a large plate, made of solid gold and with Greek motifs engraved, Dean used it to shield the fairy's continued assault. The blade struck the disc with alarming accuracy and in a hail of solid, deadly blows.

One particularly vicious swing, that Dean barely managed to dodge, got the fairy's dagger stuck in one of the wooden beams. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Dean swung his shield, hitting the hobgoblin right in the face.

Stunned, the creature staggered back, piles of coins making his steps even more unsteady than the ringing in his head.

Dean knew he couldn't keep ducking and dodging forever. The creature was faster than him, stronger than him and not working on any broken bones. Taking a dive forward that brought tears to his eyes as he leg collided with the hard floor, Dean's hands folded around the large gold trophy that he'd been keeping track of. First place for the Toole's male swim team, Dean noted in passage.

"Give it to me! It's mine," the fairy hissed, sharp teeth ready to finish what he couldn't with the dagger.

"Okay… okay," Dean let out in surrender. Pushing himself up until he was sitting against one of the walls, he held out the trophy, waiting for the hobgoblin to collect it.

Pointy ears bent back in suspicion and keen violet eyes following Dean's every move, the fairy moved closer, careful step after careful step, sniffing some trap in the air.

The call of the gold, however, was stronger than prudence, and the fairy snatched the trophy from Dean's hands with a snarled "Mine!"

Dean sagged back in relief. "Yeah… yours," he whispered. "All of it."

Confused, the fairy looked closer at the trophy. Inside, a pair of grey boxers was tucked neatly, hidden at first glance. "Don't worry… it's a clean pair," Dean added with a wink.

From the look of fright and sadness that suddenly took over the fairy's face, Dean knew that lore had it right. The only way to get rid of a hobgoblin was to offer it some clothes.

"I'm going to rip your spine through your ears, you sack of pus!" the fairy menaced, his eyes shimmering with angry tears, as he lunged at Dean one more time. Before he could even touch the hunter, however, an invisible force yanked him back.

The hobgoblin started shimmering around the edges, center of gravity shifting like his midriff was made of quicksand. "No," the goblin cried in anger and disbelief. "I can't go ba—"

The fairy was gone with a sonic pop and an electric blast that plunged the place in darkness.

"Send my regards to king dick," Dean finished with a wave. And then Dean was alone in the basement. "Aw, shit."

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

Dean was barely awake when Sam returned from his grocery run. On top of the coffee table in front of him, there was a pile of coins that he'd brought up with him, fairy gold. Just in case.

The bag Sam had with him landed on top of the coin-pile, sending half of them to the floor. It was hard to hear what Sam was saying over the clatter of spinning and rolling coins, but his brother wasn't taking notice of any of that.

They were rich... and the money would never be used because no one could see it. Karma, it seemed, had arrived early to punish them.

Dealing with the fairy, however, had quenched some of Dean's nervousness about how to deal with Sam and the crap that was heading their way. In a weird sense, he felt good that he'd been right about the fairy; that his instincts, despite all that had happened with Cass, were something he could still depend on.

And Dean's instincts were telling him that there was something off with Sam. Well, something off-_er_.

The fact that Sam had brought him a piece of cake rather than pie? It felt like it was just the tip of the iceberg about to sink the Titanic.

The end

Again, the biggest thank you goes to Jackfan2 for her marvelous work. All remaining mistakes are mine ;)


End file.
